Researchers from the Epigenetics and Immune Disease Lab at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute have recently shown that vitamin C improves the immunogenic properties of dendritic cells, in vitro. Results recently made public show that treating the cells with vitamin C leads to a more consistent activation of genes involved in the immune response, mainly through DNA demethylation, a kind of epigenetic reprogramming. This discovery may be useful to generate more potent dendritic cell-based therapies in the future.
Since the onset of anticancer cell therapies, those that use living cells to find and eliminate tumors, many types of immune cells have been used. The best-known cell therapies use lymphocytes, as in the highly successful CAR-T therapies. Recently, dendritic cells have attracted the scientists’ attention thanks to its ability to uptake and present antigens (small…
